64 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



The chiefs wear expensive stuffs, checks, and cottons, 

 which they extract from passing caravans. Women of 

 wealth affect the tobe or coast-dress, and some were seen 

 wearing red and blue broadcloths. The male costume 

 of the lower orders is confined to softened goat, sheep, 

 deer, leopard, or monkey skins, tied at two corners over 

 either shoulder, with the flaps open at one side, 

 and with tail and legs dangling in the wind. 

 Women who cannot afford cloth use as a succe- 

 daneum a narrow kilt of fibre or skin, and some con- 

 tent themselves with a tassel of fibre or a leafy twig 

 depending from a string bound round the waist, and 

 displaying the nearest approach to the original fig-leaf. 

 At Ujiji, however, the people are observed, for the first 

 time, to make extensive use of the macerated tree-bark, 

 wdiich supplies the place of cotton in Urundi, Karagwah, 

 and the northern kingdoms. This article, technically 

 termed "mbugu," is made from the inner bark of various 

 trees, especially the mrimba and the mwale, or huge 

 Eaphia-palm. The trunk of the full-grown tree is 

 stripped of its integument twice or thrice, and is bound 

 with plantain-leaves till a finer growth is judged fit for 

 manipulation. This bark is carefully removed, steeped 

 in water, macerated, kneaded, and pounded with clubs 

 and battens to the consistency of a coarse cotton. Palm- 

 oil is then spirted upon it from the mouth, and it 

 acquires the colour of chamois-leather. The Wajiji ob- 

 tain the mbugu mostly from Urundi and Uvira. They 

 are fond of striping it with a black vegetable mud, so 

 as to resemble the spoils of leopards and wild cats, 

 and they favour the delusion by cutting the edge into 

 long strips, like the tails and other extremities of wild 

 beasts. The price of the mbugu varies according to 

 size, from six to twelve khete or strings of beads. 



